Solothurn: 16 years imprisonment for murderer of her two daughters
Published: Friday, Apr 12th 2024, 13:30
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The woman who stabbed two of her three daughters to death in Gerlafingen SO in early 2021 was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment on Friday. The Bucheggberg-Wasseramt district court clearly classified the crime as multiple murder.
In prison, the woman has to undergo psychiatric treatment. The 41-year-old will also have to pay high costs. The court awarded the father of the victim CHF 140,000 in compensation and CHF 70,000 to her eldest daughter from a previous relationship, who was 12 years old at the time of the crime. In addition, there is an obligation to pay damages.
Because the Swiss woman had wrongly accused her then husband of being a danger to the 7 and 8-year-old girls, she was also found guilty of defamation. She received a conditional fine for this. Shortly before the crime, she had suggested to her divorce lawyer that the children should be cared for alternately by their father and mother.
The judgment of the court of first instance is not yet legally binding. It can be appealed to the High Court of the Canton of Solothurn. In the main hearing on Tuesday, the public prosecutor had demanded a life sentence for murder. The defense lawyer had pleaded for 13 years imprisonment for multiple homicide.
Complex crime background
The court did not make the decision easy for itself. It considered various hypotheses that the psychiatric expert had put forward for the motive. Among other things, he had diagnosed the woman with a combined personality disorder with histrionic and borderline components.
The court came to the conclusion that the crime could not be understood by looking at just one of these hypotheses. It was a "mixture of different factors", said the presiding judge. To better understand the crime, the court looked back to the summer of 2020, when the woman separated from her husband and moved to Gerlafingen with their daughters,
The Italian-speaking woman, who also speaks French, was now in a German-speaking part of Switzerland where she knew no one. With three daughters alone, she was overwhelmed, said the judge. She felt "exhaustion, despair, frustration and anger" towards her husband.
Postcard as a trigger
On January 15, 2021, the day before the crime, the situation came to a head. It began with a postcard to the girls, written by a family friend of whom the accused was jealous. On that Friday, she also received the draft of the divorce settlement that she herself had asked for shortly beforehand.
Also on Friday, she made two phone calls to her husband, demanding that he come to her because she was feeling unwell. He told her that he was on his way to a skiing weekend in Ticino - with a family friend. That was when she realized that she was no longer the center of attention, the judge said.
"Destroying what is most valuable"
On the morning of January 16, 2021, the woman stabbed her 7- and 8-year-old daughters one after the other with a large kitchen knife. After the killings, she told the eldest daughter that the two younger ones were no longer alive. She then called the police.
For the court, it was clearly a case of murder. The woman had wanted to take revenge for being abandoned. And she wanted to destroy the most valuable thing in her relationship with her husband. These were "purely selfish motives" for the crime.
She had "grossly exploited the children's unconditional love and trust", the judge said. Where, if not in their own beds, could children feel safe? And that was exactly where the accused had killed them.
The court classified the woman's culpability as serious. For the sentence, it took into account her diagnosed disorders and, according to the expert, her slightly reduced culpability, her difficult childhood and youth and her cooperative behavior in the criminal proceedings from the outset.
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